r/Nightshift

I swear people who’ve never worked nights talk about it like they’ve got it all figured out.

What’s one thing someone said that made you think, “Yeah, shut up, you clearly don’t get it”?

I barely see daylight and feel like it’s messing with my mood. anyone have tricks for getting some sun without wrecking sleep?

Thought I’d share with you guys that my night tonight is flying by! Going really well I’d say, can’t wait to go to sleep at the end of it however.

All alone tonight and double the work. I feel so crappy and just want to go home. Help me make it through the next 6.5 hours pleeeease.

I used to have a crippling fear of death, I now embrace the thought. That is all.

Headaches, stomach issues, you name it. been doing nights for months and it feels worse than day work. how do you cope when your body fights you every shift?

I can talk on the phone at my job. I also don't work with anyone. I love calls. I'm in Oregon. If you read this tell me your favorite kind of cookie.

A lot of shift work conversations focus on getting through the shift itself, but I honestly think the commute on bad sleep is one of the most underrated parts of it.

For some people, it’s the drive in after failed pre-shift sleep.
For some people, it’s the drive home after pushing through the whole shift.

Either way, that half-awake, brain-fogged state where you’re technically functioning but not really feeling fully there can feel way riskier than people talk about.

What part feels worst to you on low sleep — before work, during work, or the commute?

Ever since I started my night shifts as a new grad I have obviously lost my appetite during the day but then when I eat, I get really nauseas. My bowels are less active and I hate the way this schedule has already affected my health.

For any of you who work nights, did you experience similar symptoms and did it get better? Or do I move to days .

People who work night shift and work from home, how do you managed? I got this night shift job - 10PM-7AM, and 3 months in and I am still struggling. Ngl sometimes I fall asleep around 3am, the bed close to me is just too hard to resist lol.

I feel like this is one of the most frustrating parts of working nights.

You can be completely wiped out, know you need sleep, finally get the chance to lie down… and then your body just won’t cooperate.

Or you fall asleep for a little while, wake up too early, and never really get back into it.

It’s such a weird kind of misery because from the outside it sounds simple — “just sleep when you get home” — but for a lot of people it really isn’t.

What usually gets you more: not being able to fall asleep, or waking up too early and not being able to get back to sleep?

There’s lots of tips/advice on this subreddit and many have been helpful, but I’ve tried a lot of these advice over the years. As much as I’d like to follow the generic advice like "don't look at your phone", it’s useless for me because it doesn’t stick beyond couple of days. I’m just not built for that level of discipline. I started looking for things that don't require me to change my personality, and most of it came down to just lowering the pressure on myself.

The biggest shift for me was when someone on this subreddit wrote about the Mythbusters episode where they found that even if you don't sleep, just laying there with your eyes closed still regains more energy than if you didn't rest at all. It’s not real sleep, but you're still recharging slowly. This takes the pressure off that I need to fall asleep immediately, and usually, because I stop trying so hard, I actually drift off.

Next helpful tip is the cognitive shuffle method. If my brain is looping on a work mistake or something stupid I said years ago, I use a "cognitive shuffle" to glitch my brain into sleep mode.

It works like this:

• Pick a word like "Bedtime."

• Visualize random, unrelated things for the first letter. For "B," I’ll imagine a Bear, then a Boat, then a Balloon.

• Move to the next letter, "E," and imagine an Eagle, then an Egg, then an Elephant.

• Keep going until your brain gets the hint and switches to that "random image" state you get in dreams.

I used to use YouTube for guided audio to help with this but eventually switched to Just Sleep. Both help, I just needed to download the audio. I recommend some form of guided audio for like first few days until you get hang of the techniques.

For the physical side, I stopped using melatonin because the nightmares were too vivid and switched to magnesium glycinate. It's more about relaxing my jaw and shoulders than knocking me out. I also realized I'm hyper-sensitive to light, so I covered the tiny LEDs on my TV and chargers with blackout stickers. It’s a small thing, but making the room a total cave helps my brain stop hunting for stimuli. Lastly, I started using mouth tape because I'm a mouth breather. It felt weird at first, but it forces my nervous system to stay in a rest state and I stopped waking up feeling like a zombie. None of this is a miracle, but it’s what worked for me when the generic advice failed.

Any other sleep advice for night shifts?

Stuck on the elevator at work lmao trying to pass the time